"If man were
immortal he could be perfectly sure of seeing the day when everything
in which he had trusted should betray his trust, and, in short, of
coming eventually to hopeless misery. He would break down, at last, as
every good fortune, as every dynasty, as every civilisation does. In
place of this we have death."

THIS
observation by Charles Sanders Peirce reminds one of the tragic drama
that unfolded after Maharaja Ranjit Singh’s death, followed by
assassinations, conspiracies, treacheries, betrayals and wars, and the
vicissitudes of his dynasty, as had happened, dwindled from bad to
worse.

Three sister Princesses — Bamba, Catherine and Sophia — photographed in 1892. Princess Bamba is sitting on
left side holding flowers

The last of the
survivors of the Maharaja’s family, Princess Bamba Sutherland, who
lived like an alien in Lahore, the capital of the kingdom of her
father and grandfather, quietly slipped into its soil on March 10,
1957, almost unknown and unwept. The UK Deputy Commissioner organised
a sparse funeral and, unfortunately, due to the sensitive relations
between India and Pakistan, no Sikh was present.

Princess Bamba
Sutherland, the eldest daughter of Maharaja Daleep Singh, was born on
September 29, 1869, in London. She was baptised Bamba Sofia Jindan
Daleep Singh, named after her mother and grandmothers’ respectively.

When she was planning to
visit India for the first time, she gave an advertisement in a local
paper, inviting applications from a lady with cultural interests and
musical background, who would like to accompany her on a visit to
India. Marie Antoninette, a Hungarian of noble descent, applied and
was accepted. Both came to India and lived at Lahore and Shimla. In
the company of the Princess, Marie Antoninette met Umrao Singh Sher-Gil
and this acquaintance led to their marriage and they left together for
Budapest where their first child Amrita Sher-Gil, the most innovative
painter of modern India, was born.

Henceforth, Princess
Bamba visited India frequently and finally settled at Lahore. She
purchased a house in the posh locality of Model Town and named it ‘Gulzar’
where she had an exclusive garden of roses spread on an area of one kanal.
Here she married Dr David Waters Sutherland who was Principal of the
King Edward Medical College, Lahore (now Medical University).

When Maharaja Daleep
Singh was not allowed to take her mother’s dead body from England to
Punjab for cremation, he had to do this last ceremony at Nasik in
Mumbai where a small samadh was built over her ashes. To fulfil
the last wish of her grandmother Maharani Jindan, Princess Bamba dug
out ashes from her samadh and deposited these in the samadh
of Maharaja Ranjit Singh at Lahore.

She had inherited a vast
collection of paintings, art objects, historical documents and royal
orders from her father and kept these in safe custody at Lahore. To
understand the significance of these documents, mostly written in
Persian, she placed an advertisement in a newspaper for hiring a
suitable scholar and selected Pir Karim Bakhsh Supra for this job.
Supra was well versed in Persian, Arabic and English. Soon her
relationship with her teacher became full of respect and trust.

She bequeathed her
collection of paintings and art objects to Pir Karim Bakhsh Supra,
who, after her death, sold these to the Government of Pakistan. The
collection, consisting of 18 oil paintings, 14 water colours, 22 ivory
paintings, 17 photographs, 10 metallic objects and seven miscellaneous
articles, are known as ‘The Princess Bamba Collection’.

These are now in the
custody of the Department of Archaeology, Government of Pakistan, for
preservation as a national asset. The collection is of immense
historical significance as it throws light on the life and time of the
Sikh Darbar in Lahore and of the artistic taste of Sikh royalty during
the mid-19th century Punjab.

Her husband Dr
Sutherland died in 1939 and without offspring she was all alone. Her
brothers and sisters had already died. Although she was still
cherishing the golden age of her house, she was fully aware of the
ultimate reality of life, as is apparent from a Persian distich
inscribed on her gravestone, which, perhaps, she had herself desired
to be engraved at her last resting-place:

Farq-i-shahi o bandagi
barkhast

Choon qaza-e navishta
aayad pish

Gar kisi khak-i murda
baz kunad

Na shanasad tavangar az
darvish.

Its translation into the
English language by Dr Mazhar Saleem of Lahore, is as under:

The difference between
royalty and servility vanishes

The moment the writing
of destiny is encountered

If one opens the grave
of a dead

None would be able to
discern rich from poor.

Located in Gora
Kabristan on Jail Road, Lahore, her grave remains decked with
flowers brought by the descendants of Pir Karim Bakhsh Supra from ‘Gulzar’,
Model Town, Lahore, the residence of late Princess Bamba Sutherland.